Amherst College - Klara Moriczhttps://www.amherst.edu/taxonomy/term/7723
en(Music) History Detectiveshttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2011winter/collegerow/music/node/293600
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Emily Gold Boutilier</span></p><table class="table-align-right-gradient" width="200" border="0" cellpadding="10"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original" src="/media/view/295585/original/144320030.jpg" border="0" alt="144320030" title="144320030" width="300" height="200"></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="drop-cap2">F</span>or a half century, the Mead Art Museum needed a good detective.</p><p>In the 1950s and 1960s the museum received, from separate donors, two pages from manuscripts containing <br>mysterious, archaic musical notation and Latin text so hard to read that it seemed to be in code.</p><p>“We couldn’t decipher them,” says Elizabeth Barker, director and chief curator of the museum. Decorations <br>on the manuscripts led the curators to believe that they were from 14th-century Italy, but the museum knew <br>virtually nothing else about them, Barker says. The musical notation barely resembled modern-day sheet music. “We only knew what we could see on the surface.”<br><br></p><table class="table-align-left-gradient" width="200" border="0" cellpadding="10"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image standard" src="/media/view/295658/standard/Hist%2Bdetectives%2B1.jpg" border="0" alt="Hist%20detectives%201" title="Hist%20detectives%201" width="224" height="300"></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>Enter the students in “Music 21: Music and Culture.” Last semester, these 14 men and women became sleuths, unraveling the mystery of the musical manuscripts.</p><p>Their professor, Klára Móricz, presented the cold case early in the semester. Working in groups, the students set out to transpose two manuscript pages into modern musical notation, to decode and translate the Latin and to learn when the music might have been performed. <br><br>The case was an opportunity to apply a classroom lesson to a real-world problem. The students recognized the archaic music as quadratic notation, which they’d learned to read in class. In groups, they set about transposing the music into a form that today’s performers could understand. They identified the music as chants. <br><br>“More difficult,” says Music 21 student Jeremy Koo ’12, “was trying to decipher the Latin.” But they had more than just music education on their side: “Lo and behold,” says Hilary Budwey ’13, “there were a few kids in the class who’d taken Latin.” She was one of them. <br><br>The text, however, was a hostile witness. “A lot of the letters were faded,” says Budwey. “That was the first problem.” Posing another challenge, the unusual calligraphy made it “difficult to tell what letters were really what,” she says. To make matters worse, the manuscripts featured strange Latin abbreviations that Budwey and her classmates had never before encountered.</p><table class="table-align-right-gradient" width="200" border="0" cellpadding="10"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image standard" src="/media/view/295587/standard/144320050.jpg" border="0" alt="144320050" title="144320050" width="300" height="200"></span></div></td></tr></tbody></table><p>But never underestimate a liberal arts student. After deciphering several abbreviations and phrases, the students used computer databases to identify the type of liturgical books that would have contained such chants and the services during which such chants were sung. As it turned out, one chant was sung at the Feast of St. Michael the Archangel—which happened to be the date that the projects were due—while the other was from the fourth Sunday of Advent. The students deduced that the pages are from manuscripts for Gregorian chants. </p><p>The Mead was thrilled—not only that the mystery was solved but also that Móricz had used the museum’s collection “not as a garnish” to coursework, Barker says, but as the “main dish, letting students sink their intellectual forks into it.” <br><br>The detectives met at the Mead in December to perform a concert of the chants. As one Music 21 student put it, they’d breathed new life into dead music.</p> <p><img src="/media/view/230863/thumbnail/audio.png" border="0" alt="audio" title="audio" width="14" height="15"> Listen to an audio clip of students chanting “Princeps.” Play below, or <a href="/media/view/295662/original/Princeps.m4a">download the MP4</a>.</p> <div style="width:200px;height:21px;"><div><div style="position: relative; display: block;">
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</div></div> <p class="fine-print">Manuscript image courtesy of Mead Art Museum. Other photos by Jessica Mestre ’10.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/4527">Mead Art Musem</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7723">Klara Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/9539">Gregorian Chant</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12268">Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14787">music history</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/293600" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Mon, 14 Feb 2011 05:00:00 +0000kdduke293600 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2011winter/collegerow/music/node/293600#commentsMedieval Detectiveshttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/news/amherstinthenews/archive/node/277533
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>After a semester’s worth of research, students in music professor Klara Moricz’s “Music and Culture” class have deduced that <span><span>two pieces of </span></span><span><span>sheet music in the Mead Art Museum’s collection</span></span> are actually manuscripts for 14<sup>th</sup><span><span> century</span></span> Gregorian chants. Their work was the focus of lengthy stories in the <a href="http://www.gazettenet.com/2010/12/16/medieval-detectives"><i>Daily Hampshire Gazette</i></a> newspaper and on <a href="http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wfcr/news.newsmain?action=article&amp;ARTICLE_ID=1739097">WFCR-FM</a></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1278">mead art museum</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1351">daily hampshire gazette</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7723">Klara Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12220">WFCR-FM</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/14490">Music and Culture</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/277533" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Tue, 28 Dec 2010 21:38:53 +0000channa277533 at https://www.amherst.eduThe Forgotten Composerhttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2010winter/collegerow/composer/node/168825
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">By Emily Gold Boutilier</span></p><table class="table-align-right-gradient" width="200" border="0" cellpadding="10"><tbody><tr><td><div class="mediainline"><span class="inline"><img class="image original" src="/media/view/169077/original/140930040.jpg" border="0" width="300" height="200" alt="image"></span></div><div class="fine-print" align="center">After researching an obscure Russian-born composer, Klára Móricz, a music professor, organized the world premiere, at Amherst, of three arias from the opera <i>The Blackamoor of Peter the Great</i>.</div></td></tr></tbody></table><p><span class="drop-cap2">I</span>t began when a Russian professor, Stanley Rabinowitz, steered a music professor, Klára Móricz, to documents by an obscure Russian-born composer.<br><br> The composer is Arthur Vincent Lourié, and a small number of his personal papers are part of the college’s Center for Russian Culture, which Rabinowitz, the Henry Steele Commager Professor and Professor of Russian, directs. <br><br> “I’d never heard of him before,” Móricz says of Lourié. The composer, important in Russia in the 1910s, was a close associate of Igor Stravinsky in the late 1920s and early 1930s and went on to immigrate to the United States. All but forgotten by the 1950s, he died in 1966. <br><br> Móricz, who is the Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor of Music, soon became interested in Lourié’s final opera, <i>The Blackamoor of Peter the Great</i>, based on Alexander Pushkin’s unfinished novel <i>The Moor of Peter the Great</i>. Lourié considered the opera his most important work, yet it had never been performed—not once. It existed only on paper. <br><br> Móricz went on to research and write about Lourié and <i>The Blackamoor</i>, which she came to view as a “quintessential Russian Silver Age opera,” even though Lourié completed it while living in the United States in 1961, long after Russia’s pre-revolutionary Silver Age.<br><br> Now, thanks to Móricz, <i>The Blackamoor</i> has finally seen the light of day. Last fall marked the world premiere of three arias from the opera, performed in the intimate Rotherwas Room in the Mead Art Museum. The concert of Lourié music also featured short piano pieces and the post-World War II <i>Concerto da camera for solo violin and strings</i>. Performers included several musicians from the Five Colleges, including vocalist Peter W. Shea, a professional singer who works at the UMass library. <br><br> The concert coincided with a Mead exhibition on Silver Age Russian costume design and inaugurated a public conference, “Arthur Lourié and the Voice of Silver Age Russia,” intended to shed fresh light on the composer. Móricz organized both the concert and the conference.<br><br> Móricz says it was a treat to listen to the arias and the other Lourié music. She says of the <i>Concerto da camera</i>, “You feel like the instruments are speaking and interacting with each other.” <br><br> Móricz, who wrote a 2008 book on Jewish identities in 20th-century music, is teaching a course this semester on music by 19th-century composers. Someday, she hopes <i>The Blackamoor</i> will be performed in full, in Russia.</p><p><span class="fine-print">Photo by Samuel Masinter '04</span></p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/971">russian</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/1235">opera</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/2532">Stanley Rabinowitz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7723">Klara Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/8312">Rabinowitz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/10968">Lourie</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12268">Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/12269">Blackamoor</a></div></div></div><ul class="links inline"><li class="sharethis first last"><a href="/sharethis-ajax/168825" class="mm-sharethis">Share</a></li>
</ul>Tue, 26 Jan 2010 19:29:31 +0000kdduke168825 at https://www.amherst.eduhttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2010winter/collegerow/composer/node/168825#commentsShort Takeshttps://www.amherst.edu/aboutamherst/magazine/issues/2008_spring/amherstcreates/shorttakes/node/54736
<div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="fine-print">Compiled by Katherine Duke ’05 </span></p><p><em><strong>Common Kitchen (<a href="http://www.commonkitchen.com">commonkitchen.com</a>).</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Parker Morse ’96 and Noah Smith. 2007. </span><br>This Website, designed as a “global index for recipes from all sources, online and in print,” invites members, who join for free, to browse, rate and discuss recipes and add to the collection. The site also features restaurant menus and reviews.<br><br><em><strong>Far-Away Places: Lessons in Exile.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Howard R. Wolf ’58. Jerusalem and New York: Artzy Books, 2007. </span><span class="gray">191 pp. $21.95 hardcover. </span><br>In this essay collection, Wolf writes about teaching and living overseas, including in Turkey, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong, South Africa and Finland. The book includes several mentions of Amherst. Wolf is a professor of English and senior fellow at the State University of New York in Buffalo.<br><br><strong><em>Feel Better Now Yoga.</em></strong> <span class="gray">With Gary Halperin ’89. Sarasota, Fla.: Osko Production, 2007. 52 minutes. $15.99 DVD. </span><br>Halperin began practicing Kripalu yoga shortly after graduating from Amherst. This DVD features a yoga class taught by Halperin, a certified instructor, on a Sarasota beach.<br><br><em><strong>Hungry for Paris: The Ultimate Guide to the City’s 102 Best Restaurants.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Alexander Lobrano ’77, with photos by <em>Life </em>magazine’s Bob Peterson. New York: Random House, 2008. 448 pp. $16 paperback. </span><br>In this series of essays, Lobrano, the European correspondent for <em>Gourmet </em>magazine, addresses such matters as dining alone, choosing seasonal cuisine and “eating the unspeakable.”<br> <br><strong><em>International Law Stories.</em></strong> <span class="gray">Edited and with essays by John E. Noyes ’73, Laura A. Dickinson and Mark W. Janis. New York: Foundation Press, 2007. $30 paperback. </span><br>This book gathers essays on topics including the Nuremberg judgment and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal. Noyes is a professor at the California Western School of Law in San Diego.<br><br><em><strong>Jewish Identities: Nationalism, Racism, and Uto­pianism in Twentieth-Century Music. </strong></em><span class="gray">By Klára Móricz, the Joseph E. and Grace W. Valentine Visiting Assistant Professor of Music. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2008. 436 pp. $49.95 hardcover. </span><br>Móricz discusses various Russian-Jewish composers, Swiss-American composer Ernest Bloch and Austrian-American composer Arnold Schoenberg.<br><br><em><strong>John Steuart Curry’s </strong></em><strong>Hoover and the Flood</strong><em><strong>: Painting Modern History.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Charles C. Eldredge ’66. Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. 86 pp. $29.95 hardcover.</span> <br>Eldredge uses Curry’s painting of President Hoover directing relief efforts after the 1927 Mississippi River flood to provide a glimpse into U.S. art, journalism and politics in 1940, when <em>Life</em> magazine commissioned the work. Eldredge, a former director of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, is the Hall Distinguished Professor at the University of Kansas. <br><br><em><strong>The Latino/a Canon and the Emergence of Post-Sixties Literature.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Raphael Dalleo ’98 and Elena Machado Sáez. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 205 pp. $74.95 hardcover. </span><br>The authors, both assistant professors of English at Florida Atlantic University, present the first scholarly examination of the art and politics of post-1960s Latino/a writers including Junot Diaz, Abraham Rodriguez and Julia Alvarez.<br><br><em><strong>Looking Back: A Career in Child Neurology.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By John M. Freeman ’54, M.D. Charleston, S.C.: BookSurge, 2007. 478 pp. $23.99 paperback. </span><br>This autobiography traces Freeman’s work in pediatric neurology and epilepsy. One chapter, with photographs, is about his years at Amherst. <br> <br><em><strong>On Brokeback Mountain: Meditations About Masculinity, Fear, and Love in the Story and the Film.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Eric Patterson ’70. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 2008. 301 pp. $38.95 paperback. </span><br>This book is dedicated to the fictional cowboys in Annie Proulx’s 1997 short story and Ang Lee’s 2005 film. Patterson, an associate professor of English at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, examines the tale and relates it to broader traditions in literature and cinema, and issues of sexuality.<br> <br><em><strong>Predictocracy: Market Mechanisms for Public and Private Decision Making.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Michael Abramowicz ’94. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. 346 pp. $50 hardcover. </span><br>“Prediction markets” are speculative markets that assign monetary values to all manner of events—election outcomes, business deals, athletic victories—based on their like­lihood. Abramowicz, a law professor at George Washington University, explains how these markets work.<br> <br><em><strong>Thinking on Screen: Film as Philosophy.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Thomas E. Wartenberg ’71. New York: Routledge, 2007. 164 pp. $29.95 paperback. </span><br>A professor at Mount Holyoke College, Wartenberg ponders such films as <em>Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind</em>. <br><br><em><strong>Winners Without Losers: Why Americans Should Care More About Global Economic Policy.</strong></em> <span class="gray">By Edward J. Lincoln ’71. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2007. 267 pp. $27.95 hardcover. </span><br>In this book, from the Council on Foreign Relations, Lincoln criticizes what he sees as a U.S. focus on military might as a means to ensure peace and prosperity. Lincoln directs the Center for Japan-U.S. Business and Economic Studies at New York University’s Stern School of Business.</p></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-1 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/114">Katherine Duke</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/889">parker morse</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/6124">short takes</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7190">Howard R. Wolf</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7720">Gary Halperin</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7721">Alexander Lobrano</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7722">John E. Noyes</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7723">Klara Moricz</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7724">Charles C. Eldredge</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7725">Raphael Dalleo</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7726">John M. Freeman</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7727">Eric Patterson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7728">Michael Abramowicz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7729">Thomas E. Wartenberg</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/taxonomy/term/7730">Edward J. Lincoln</a></div></div></div>Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:59:54 +0000kdduke54736 at https://www.amherst.edu